The Ethernet Ring Protection (ERP) protocol is an industry standard and is specified within International Telecommunication Union ITU SG15 Q9, under G.8032 “Ethernet ring protection switching” (G.8032v1-June 2008, and G.8032v2-July 2010). The ERP G.8032 protocol allows multiple “virtual” rings to be present on network elements (i.e., ring nodes) that form a closed loop (i.e., a logical ring). Each virtual ring (associated with the logical ring) has independent control frames (i.e., control planes) that need to be transmitted to manage the protection switching function of the “virtual” ring. Consequently, when the association between “virtual” rings to logical rings gets large (e.g., greater than two), there is considerable processing strain/stress placed on the process (e.g., software) within each ring node, since it is effectively supporting a separate control plane for each virtual ring. Disadvantageously, this additional and excess processing adversely impacts the protection switching time for traffic it is servicing. As G.8032 continues to proliferate with increased deployments within networks, the scaling problem described herein adversely impacts such deployments.